Documenting Hiroshima 80 years after A-bombing: May 27, 2016, U.S. President’s First Visit to Hiroshima
May 29, 2025
by Michio Shimotaka and Minami Yamashita, Staff Writers
On May 27, 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima. This was the first visit to an A-bombed city by a sitting president of the country that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around the time he was inaugurated as president in January 2009, Hiroshima’s atomic bomb survivors requested him to visit the city. Their request was finally fulfilled after more than seven years.
After attending the Group of Seven Ise-Shima Summit held in Mie Prefecture, Mr. Obama arrived at Peace Memorial Park (Naka Ward) shortly after 5:20 p.m., while the entrance to the area was restricted. He entered the East Building of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and stayed inside for about 10 minutes. According to the explanation given by the city government later, he looked at specially displayed personal belongings and photographs of atomic bomb victims, as well as paper cranes folded by Sadako Sasaki, who died of leukemia 10 years after the atomic bombing at the age of 12.
After leaving the museum, he walked with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the Cenotaph for the A- bomb victims. He laid a wreath at the cenotaph and closed his eyes for several seconds. Then, against the backdrop of the A-bomb Dome, he addressed some 100 guests invited by the Japanese and U.S. governments. “Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed.”
This sentence was part of his 17-minute Hiroshima Speech, which he himself carefully polished up and revised. “Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them,” he said. Ten hibakusha listened closely in the quietness. Large crowds had gathered around the park.
(Originally published on May 29, 2025)
On May 27, 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima. This was the first visit to an A-bombed city by a sitting president of the country that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around the time he was inaugurated as president in January 2009, Hiroshima’s atomic bomb survivors requested him to visit the city. Their request was finally fulfilled after more than seven years.
After attending the Group of Seven Ise-Shima Summit held in Mie Prefecture, Mr. Obama arrived at Peace Memorial Park (Naka Ward) shortly after 5:20 p.m., while the entrance to the area was restricted. He entered the East Building of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and stayed inside for about 10 minutes. According to the explanation given by the city government later, he looked at specially displayed personal belongings and photographs of atomic bomb victims, as well as paper cranes folded by Sadako Sasaki, who died of leukemia 10 years after the atomic bombing at the age of 12.
After leaving the museum, he walked with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the Cenotaph for the A- bomb victims. He laid a wreath at the cenotaph and closed his eyes for several seconds. Then, against the backdrop of the A-bomb Dome, he addressed some 100 guests invited by the Japanese and U.S. governments. “Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed.”
This sentence was part of his 17-minute Hiroshima Speech, which he himself carefully polished up and revised. “Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them,” he said. Ten hibakusha listened closely in the quietness. Large crowds had gathered around the park.
(Originally published on May 29, 2025)
